Art Garfunkel Everything Waits To Be Noticed CD

W/ Maia Sharp & Buddy Mondlock & Produced By Billy Mann

Personnel includes: Art Garfunkel (vocals); Buddy Mondlock, Billy Mann, Larry Beaird (acoustic guitar); George Marinelli, Jeff King (electric guitar); Carl Gorodetzky, Pamela Sixfin, Lee Larrison, Conni Ellisor, Alan Umstead (violin); Kristin Wilkinson (viola); Robert Mason (cello); Maia Sharp (clarinet, soprano saxophone); Tony Harrell (accordion, keyboards); Mark Hill (bass); Shannon Forrest, Steve Brewster (drums); Eric Darken (percussion)
Recorded at Omni Sound Recording Studio, Nashville, Tennessee.
Personnel: Larry Beaird (acoustic guitar, nylon-string guitar, banjo, mandolin); Billy Mann (acoustic guitar, background vocals); Buddy Mondlock (acoustic guitar); Jeff King (electric guitar, mandolin); George Marinelli (electric guitar); Connie Ellisor, Carl Gorodetzky, Pamela Sixfin, Lee Larrison, Alan Umstead (violin); Kristin Wilkinson, Jim Grosjean (viola); Carole A. Rabinowitz, Robert Mason (cello); Tony Harrell (accordion, keyboards); Maia Sharp (clarinet, soprano saxophone); Shannon Forrest (drums, percussion); Steve Brewster (drums); Eric Darken (percussion).
Audio Mixer: George Massenburg.
Liner Note Author: Jann Wenner.
Recording information: Omni Sound Recording Studio, Nashville, TN.
Photographer: Andrew Eccles.
Making his technical debut as a songwriter (technical in that his prose poems serve as a lyric source on several tracks), Art Garfunkel takes top billing in what actually qualifies as a collaboration with two other singer/songwriters, Nashville's Buddy Mondlock and L.A.-based Maia Sharp; producer/songwriter Billy Mann plays an essential creative role as well. For all the diverse input, this remains a Garfunkel project at heart. His airy, delicate singing, remarkably identical in quality to his earliest recordings some 40 years earlier, provides the essential textural reference; Mondlock's vocals uncannily replicate Garfunkel's from the opening moments of "Bounce" and elsewhere throughout the album. Only two of these songs were written by outsiders, and these -- the self-consciously buoyant "Young and Free" and uncomfortably precious "What I Love About Rain" -- don't match the rest in either musical or lyrical accomplishment. Two in particular create near-magical spells, and both are draw from Garfunkel's writing: "The Thread," a wistful chronicle of love lost amidst references to romantic landmarks in New York, and "Perfect Moment," an account of strangers exchanging glances in a theater lobby and achieving, in that timeless second, all the perfection and connection two people might expect. This performance, musically reminiscent of the Simon & Garfunkel classic "For Emily," is exquisitely crafted and impeccably performed -- a high point not only here, but in all of Garfunkel's catalog. ~ Robert L. Doerschuk